A Glee Collection
by fayellen
Summary: Ever wondered about the characters home lives, pasts or futures? With only 13 episodes of Glee left we may never know, so I decided to go ahead and invent them for us all! Featuring Brittany and Santana, Quinn and Puck, Rachel, and possibly more.
1. Santana

**AN: So the idea I had is to give glee some backstory (and possibly some future story) by writing very short stories. I'm not going to let myself go over 3 word pages. So far I have ideas for Santana, Brittany, (because Brittana is endgame) Puck, Quinn and Rachel. Let me know if you like it. Also to anyone who was reading my old Brittana fanfic, sorry I got lost off, I had v. important exams last summer and now I'm struggling with how to reconcile the story from what it is to what I wish it was so it may get abandoned thoroughly and completely (although there are 3 more chapters written so if anyone wants them I'll post them.)**

**Santana - Why She Loved Me.**

The ache of missing her always hits me in sad and sweet ways. Hidden deep within me, surfacing infrequently now but in moments you'd never expect to find it. Like now. Thinking about the infrequency with which I miss her has made me miss her.

When we had first broken up it had been all consuming. I had hidden in my dorm room, back in St Louis, red eyed and heartbroken with my over protective roommate hovering like the helicopter parent I'd never had. _Have some tea._ She would say. Or she'd try and coax me from under the covers to watch a soppy movie with her as if that would make me feel better. My life had felt like a black hole. The future I'd imagined, and the stories we'd lived rapidly slipping into its depths.

But over time this feeling dissipated. It became at first a deep seated longing situated somewhere between the eternal lump in my throat and the deepest pit of my stomach where I imagine we keep our souls. Then there came the days where the pain became abstract. Where I'd catch myself mid-laugh and feel surprised the noise was coming from me, and then I'd figure out why I was surprised and that would make me miss her. These were the days when if her name was spoken in conversation by Rachel or Kurt there'd be an awkward glance between them. A casual flick of their heads towards me. I'd pause almost imperceptibly in eating my plate of egg-plant lasagne, or doing up my shoelaces and then casually continue, the burn mark of her name fading the way condensation rises on a window after a child has drawn on it.

The hardest thing about missing her was the fact that I had simultaneously lost a lover and a best friend. She was the one who, since I the tender age of seven, I had ran to every time I had interesting news. Every time some development occurred in my life. She was the one I'd watch goofy movies with. The one I could count on to always have ice cream just because I wanted it. When we were children she was the one I had a secret language with. She was the girl who taught me to do handstands and to tie my shoelaces. When we reached junior high, she was the one I made dance routines with. Her house was the first place I went to a sleepover. She was the one I'd share my lunches, my music, my secrets and later my heart with. Everywhere I turned she was there. Every memory I have is laced with her presence like an underlying current in a lake. One that can drag you down before you even know it. Her presence in my memories was suffocating for a while as I learned to reconcile her image of lover with the friend I knew we could only be.

It is strange to think of her in this light: suffocating. She has saved me more times than I can imagine and I in all honesty I don't know why. I find it impossible to believe that she can look at me, me whose waist is too thin and cheekbones too high, me who is fickle and neurotic and insecure, me who has brought her so much pain, and find someone who takes her breath away and makes her stomach do backflips. Or I mean to say, she did look at me and see that. Now… I don't know.

The first time she saved me I was merely a child. She saved me from the grief that strangled my house. The grief for a brother I had not known. A grief that I could not be a part of but was intrinsically a factor in. As a child I would creep through the hushed halls of my home – my father, a doctor, being absent, my mother locked away in her room – desperate for the moment I would answer the door to her beaming face and breathe in a rush of fresh air. From the walls around me loomed the pictures of the brother I had never known, pressing down on me and robbing my lungs of all air. Here he was, learning to ride a tricycle, and here graduating high school and here in the final picture wearing his uniform. I had come along late, an afterthought perhaps but more probably an accident, and had been only two when he died and was shipped home with an American flag draped across his coffin. Suffice to say, my mother has never quite recovered and I have paid penance for my existence in a world he does not: Never able to live up to her expectations, for all she really wants is her son back.

The second time she saved me it was from myself – a destructive power I had not foreseen even as I span wildly out of control. She made me go to a counsellor. And one night, when she found me shaking with withdrawal symptoms all she said was, _Oh San_, a myriad of emotions wrapped in the two simple syllables. She taught me to love myself. To be proud of who I am. And for that, I can never repay her.

So you see, she is truly part of me. Her presence in me can neither be denied nor ignored but somehow for everyone's benefit it must be forgotten. That is what I'm telling myself right now.

Because right now, I miss her in a different way. A way I'd never really thought about before until it happened. Because today I kissed another girl and meant it. Not like with Elaine – a stupid ploy that she saw right through – but for real. In an, I like her, kind of way. Dani didn't taste like her though. Her lips didn't feel the same under mine. Her body felt too large, her hands too soft, her face too wide. Her hair was too long and her scent was different. Not bad different - she smelt of laundry detergent and peaches – none of this was bad different. It was just different. Unfamiliar. Like returning to your childhood home after your parents have remodelled your room. Familiar territory but utterly unrecognisable. Tinged with sadness and nostalgia. And you can't help but wish you were ten years old again and didn't have a worry in the world and your teddy bear still sat on your wardrobe. So right now that's how I miss her.

Right now, I'm staring at her name on my phone. It says _Britt 3 3 3_. And underneath are written seven words. Typed minutes ago by me. _I met someone today. I miss you. _Despite their juxtaposition, they are not intended to hurt. Simply to state. Simply to let her know how I feel. Carefully, I move my thumb forward and hover over the send button but after a moment's hesitation I tap the delete button, as I knew I would even from beginning to type. I always chicken out you see. Fickle, neurotic and insecure. I really have no idea why she loves me. Loved me. Why she loved me.


	2. Rachel

**AN: Disregard season 6 rumours and the end of season 5. IMO, Rachel would never leave Broadway after she worked so hard to get there. Disagree if you will but enjoy none the less!**

**Rachel – Life with a Ghost**

Rachel is dying. She knows that and yet it does not sadden her. For a long time, she has watched herself age in the mirror – first the slackening of skin, crow's feet appearing in tiny ripples around her eyes, then the greying of her hair, lightness spreading like frost from her temples. She watched as these changes happened but it still surprises her to peer in to the mirror and find an old lady staring back at her, reminding her that a lifetime has crept by her like a thief in the night.

And it has been a good lifetime, she knows this. Her health is good and she has enjoyed a long and illustrious career on the stage. She has earned a master's degree, won a Tony, sang for a president. She has led programs for underprivileged children from the city encouraging them to take part in music. She has given copiously to charity. She has loved and been loved, and at the end of the day – isn't that what we live for? To pursue our passions and be someone else's? Yes, Rachel is contented with how her life has turned out and as she lies here now, she knows the end is near. These past few weeks, she's been feeling… frail. Lighter than air, as if she will float away on the next breath of wind. And perhaps she will.

If there's one thing she regrets – no, not regrets, it's something she wonders about. She wonders about how life would have turned out had Finn been alive. She still remembers the day they buried him. How it had been odd, to stand in the spring sunshine, the sun peeking through the clouds and warming them all through their black clothes as the preacher spoke. Before this, she had assumed all funerals took place on cold grey Tuesdays, the way they seem to in films and sitcoms. But not Finn's. Finn's took place in the brightest sunshine – even death could not subdue him.

Hundreds of people had turned up. Hundreds of people, to give his parents their condolences, to lay flowers by his picture. There was no gravestone, you see. No coffin. They'd had him cremated – Carole saying she couldn't abide the thought of her son in the ground. She wanted to scatter the ashes, but on the day of the funeral they sat in an urn by his portrait. The love of her life, boiled down to one jar.

She felt cheated then. Of the life she had always imagined – yes, they'd been broken up, but they always found their way back to one another. She had never doubted that they would this time. She despised the people at the funeral; for living instead of him, for pretending they'd known him. She wanted to be selfish in her grief. To tell them to leave. To stop wishing Burt and Carole their best. To stop staring at that picture with such sadness etched on their features. They hadn't known him. Not like she had. They hadn't listened to his deepest secrets and his darkest fears. They hadn't promised to support him through his dreams. They hadn't had their heart broken, and stitched back together again by _this boy_. She wanted to rant and rail and scream at them. She needed something to blame.

_I wish they'd leave, _she finally said to Kurt.

_We'll leave. We'll go somewhere. Just us._

As soon as the service was over, they slipped away. Sitting on the hill overlooking Lima, they had toasted Finn with a bottle of cheap vodka – a poor send of if ever there was one – the picture taken from the memorial service propped between them. They didn't speak. As the sun set over Lima, Rachel began to weep gently, then more heavily. Once darkness fell, Kurt carried her back to the car. They left the picture of Finn there on that hill. Burt and Carole never asked them about it.

She wonders, how her life would have panned out had he been alive to see it. Would they have figured things out? Would they have settled down? Bought that three bed house in the suburbs with a wrap-around porch Finn always talked about? Of course, her life with Nicholas has probably been similar. But the wrap-around porch, the white picket fence – they were always Finn's ideas. Nicholas was contented with the apartment they rented on the Upper East Side. He didn't care about the kids having some place to run wild and Rachel was happy enough to take them out to the park. And with no one to teach them how to play football or ride a bike, what other reason was there to leave the city which had always felt like Rachel's true home?

She had married Nicholas late in life. He had been her director in the Rent revival she'd starred in, in the 30's. She'd played Maureen. He'd asked her out, right after the first matinee. The thing Rachel liked about Nicholas was that he knew about Finn already. They had gone to NYADA together (so long ago now) and when she brought it up with him, as she inevitably eventually did, all he'd said was _I remember_. Other guys had run for the hills when they realised she was still hung up on Finn. But how can you let go, when someone you love just… disappears?

Rachel had fallen in love with Nicholas slowly – not in the headfirst, wounded, irrational way a teenager can. There was no specific moment she could remember, perhaps when she had caught the ghost of a laugh on his face or the twinkle of light in his eyes, nothing like that. There was a series of dates, dinners and dances to attend. He bought her roses for her dressing room, and she aftershave for him. The first time they slept together, was in her own cluttered apartment in Greenwich Village – such a grown up thing: to sleep with a man in your very own apartment. And then one day, six months in to their relationship Rachel discovered she was pregnant. And then, she discovered she was happy. She knew that Nicholas would make a wonderful Father. He was kind, and gentle and when he heard the news his face lit up like a Christmas tree. They married in a small ceremony at city hall four months later. Nicholas had pink paint underneath his fingernails from painting the nursery.

They named the baby Nancy after Nicholas's sister who had died in her twenties. Ovarian cancer or similar, Nicholas didn't like to talk about it. At least, Finn's death had been sudden. Rachel hadn't had to watch him suffer, and perhaps, with hindsight, that was a blessing in disguise. But Nancy was what made Nicholas and Rachel work. They both realised that in the important moments of their lives - the wedding, the births of their children, the time Rachel won her Tony – they were joined by two ghosts. As time had gone on, Rachel had tried her best to forget Finn, and she had. In the day-to-day he did not cross her mind. It was only in these important moments that he surfaced like drift wood in the sea, and she wondered…

When Nicholas died last year, the blow had been surprising. Rachel had been as bereft as she had been all those years ago. The love she had shared with Nicholas had perhaps been more docile than that which she shared with Finn, but it was no less real. More mature now, she resisted the urge to blame someone. She graciously hosted a memorial service. Talked about how Nicholas had been a kind and generous husband, an upstanding gentleman. And later when she returned home she looked through the photo albums detailing their lives together, the smiles, the laughter, the tears, and remembered him with fondness.

And now, Rachel has reached the end herself. Her breath rattles softly in her chest now as she reaches for the locket around her neck. She opens it to look at the two pictures inside. On one hand, there is Nicholas, the picture taken in Vermont not too long ago. His hair is thinning around his temples and he wears reading glasses. There is a look of surprise on his face. He'd been reading the morning paper. On the other there is Finn, captured forever at the age of seventeen, youthful energy still burning in his eyes. Rachel closes the locket. Not long now, and she will see them both.


End file.
